“But do you enjoy the name Duncan Idaho?”
“I think that was my name, Sire. It fits within me. Yet … it stirs up curious responses. One’s name, I think, must carry much that’s unpleasant along with the pleasant.”
“What gives you the most pleasure?” Paul asked.
Unexpectedly, the ghola laughed, said: “Looking for signs in others which reveal my former self.”
“Do you see such signs here?”
“Oh, yes, my Lord. Your man Stilgar there is caught between suspicion and admiration. He was friend to my former self, but this ghola flesh repels him. You, my Lord, admired the man I was … and you trusted him.”
“Cleansed mind,” Paul said. “How can a cleansed mind put itself in bondage to us?”
“Bondage, my Lord? The cleansed mind makes decisions in the presence of unknowns and without cause and effect. Is this bondage?”
Paul scowled. It was a Zensunni saying, cryptic, apt—immersed in a creed which denied objective function in all mental activity. Without cause and effect! Such thoughts shocked the mind. Unknowns? Unknowns lay in every decision, even in the oracular vision.
“You’d prefer we called you Duncan Idaho?” Paul asked.
“We live by differences, my Lord. Choose a name for me.”
“Let your Tleilaxu name stand,” Paul said. “Hayt—there’s a name inspires caution.”
Hayt bowed, moved back one step.
And Alia wondered: How did he know the interview was over? I knew it because I know my brother. But there was no sign a stranger could read. Did the Duncan Idaho in him know?
Paul turned toward the Ambassador, said: “Quarters have been set aside for your embassy. It is our desire to have a private consultation with you at the earliest opportunity. We will send for you. Let us inform you further, before you hear it from an inaccurate source, that a Reverend Mother of the Sisterhood, Gaius Helen Mohiam, has been removed from the heighliner which brought you. It was done at our command. Her presence on your ship will be an item in our talks.”
A wave of Paul’s left hand dismissed the envoy. “Hayt,” Paul said, “stay here.”
The Ambassador’s attendants backed away, towing the tank. Edric became orange motion in orange gas—eyes, a mouth, gently waving limbs.
Paul watched until the last Guildsman was gone, the great doors swinging closed behind them.
I’ve done it now, Paul thought. I’ve accepted the ghola. The Tleilaxu creation was bait, no doubt of it. Very likely the old hag of a Reverend Mother played the same role. But it was the time of the tarot which he’d forecast in an early vision. The damnable tarot! It muddied the waters of Time until the prescient strained to detect moments but an hour off. Many a fish took the bait and escaped, he reminded himself. And the tarot worked for him as well as against him. What he could not see, others might not detect as well.
The ghola stood, head cocked to one side, waiting.
Stilgar moved across the steps, hid the ghola from Paul’s view. In Chakobsa, the hunting language of their sietch days, Stilgar said: “That creature in the tank gives me the shudders, Sire, but this gift! Send it away!”
In the same tongue, Paul said: “I cannot.”
“Idaho’s dead,” Stilgar argued. “This isn’t Idaho. Let me take its water for the tribe.”
“The ghola is my problem, Stil. Your problem is our prisoner. I want the Reverend Mother guarded most carefully by the men I trained to resist the wiles of Voice.”
“I like this not, Sire.”
“I’ll be cautious, Stil. See that you are, too.”
“Very well, Sire.” Stilgar stepped down to the floor of the hall, passed close to Hayt, sniffed him and strode out.
Evil can be detected by its smell, Paul thought. Stilgar had planted the green and white Atreides banner on a dozen worlds, but remained superstitious Fremen, proof against any sophistication.
Paul studied the gift.
“Duncan, Duncan,” he whispered. “What have they done to you?”
“They gave me life, m’Lord,” Hayt said.
“But why were you trained and given to us?” Paul asked.
Hayt pursed his lips, then: “They intend me to destroy you.”
The statement’s candor shook Paul. But then, how else could a Zensunni-mentat respond? Even in a ghola, a mentat could speak no less than the truth, especially out of Zensunni inner calm. This was a human computer, mind and nervous system fitted to the tasks relegated long ago to hated mechanical devices. To condition him also as a Zensunni meant a double ration of honesty … unless the Tleilaxu had built something even more odd into this flesh.
Why, for example, the mechanical eyes? Tleilaxu boasted their metal eyes improved on the original. Strange, then, that more Tleilaxu didn’t wear them out of choice.
Paul glanced up at Alia’s spy hole, longed for her presence and advice, for counsel not clouded by feelings of responsibility and debt.
Once more, he looked at the ghola. This was no frivolous gift. It gave honest answers to dangerous questions.
It makes no difference that I know this is a weapon to be used against me, Paul thought.
“What should I do to protect myself from you?” Paul asked. It was direct speech, no royal “we,” but a question as he might have put it to the old Duncan Idaho.
“Send me away, m’Lord.”
Paul shook his head from side to side. “How are you to destroy me?”
Hayt looked at the guards, who’d moved closer to Paul after Stilgar’s departure. He turned, cast his gaze around the hall, brought his metal eyes back to bear on Paul, nodded.
“This is a place where a man draws away from people,” Hayt said. “It speaks of such power that one can contemplate it comfortably only in the remembrance that all things are finite. Did my Lord’s oracular powers plot his course into this place?”
Paul drummed his fingers against the throne’s arms. The mentat sought data, but the question disturbed him. “I came to this position by strong decisions … not always out of my other … abilities.”
“Strong decisions,” Hayt said. “These temper a man’s life. One can take the temper from fine metal by heating it and allowing it to cool without quenching.”
“Do you divert me with Zensunni prattle?” Paul asked.
“Zensunni has other avenues to explore, Sire, than diversion and display.”
Paul wet his lips with his tongue, drew in a deep breath, set his own thoughts into the counterbalance poise of the mentat. Negative answers arose around him. It wasn’t expected that he’d go haring after the ghola to the exclusion of other duties. No, that wasn’t it. Why a Zensunni-mentat? Philosophy … words … contemplation … inward searching … He felt the weakness of his data.
“We need more data,” he muttered.
“The facts needed by a mentat do not brush off onto one as you might gather pollen on your robe while passing through a field of flowers,” Hayt said. “One chooses his pollen carefully, examines it under powerful amplification.”
“You must teach me this Zensunni way with rhetoric,” Paul said.
The metallic eyes glittered at him for a moment, then: “M’ Lord, perhaps that’s what was intended.”
To blunt my will with words and ideas? Paul wondered.
“Ideas are most to be feared when they become actions,” Paul said.
“Send me away, Sire,” Hayt said, and it was Duncan Idaho’s voice full of concern for “the young master.”
Paul felt trapped by that voice. He couldn’t send that voice away, even when it came from a ghola. “You will stay,” he said, “and we’ll both exercise caution.”